I’m sure this contradicts like 6 different things I’ve never heard of but kriff it, here’s my two cents on the idea of “The Holonet”
Now I love a good internet and/or outsider POV fanfic, but the idea of copy-pasting the internet into the GFFA prequel era….puts an even heavier load on the suspension of disbelief. So here’s my headcanons. NOTE: Strictly communication-only technology such as voice comms or 3D hologram calls are a completely separate situation, touched on below. Television programs, social media for both text and images, videogame spheres, encyclopedias, and the WWW of the million random websites are what I mean when I refer to “the Internet.” Or, “the Holonet.”
Holonet has meant different things over our coarse of 67 years in the GFFA. The concept of the internet existing to the galaxy at large in the same way as it does to us in our modern Earth does not become a thing until the New Republic’s reign. Before the Clone Wars, planets—at least those wealthy and centrally populated enough to merit it—had their own insular internet ecosystems among their populations. However, the networks were unconnected and only serviced the planets orbited by the satellites they were built off of. Maybe one or two solar systems of several highly-integrated planets had stretched systems to connect the entire neighboring populations, but that’s as far as it got.
Put simply, Onderon might have had its own Snapchat, and Naboo might have had its own Twitter, but they were inaccessible unless you were on that planet, in range of its satellites. Someone on Onderon had no access to Naboonian hot takes, vice-versa. Side note! Entertainment like movies & television are a high commodity export/import for some planets, but pre-20s ABY (galactic streaming services….) they were distributed outside their planet of production as physical media only. Picture: Clone barracks with a DVD shelf.
Naturally, little changed about this during the Clone Wars. Political walls made bridging the gap of interstellar space even tougher than they already did in peacetime; connections between CIS and GR civilizations were dragged back in time, if anything. In the Empire’s reign, great advancements in technology were made, but little got to be publicly proposed or implemented, as the Empire wanted the galaxy to stay as it was.
The New Republic, however, ushered in a new era of social connectivity in the galaxy and one could equate the 10s-30s ABY with the 1990s-2010s in terms of the internet’s explosion into normalcy. I made this up as a headcanon because…a whole lot of things between the prequels to originals get put on quite shaky grounds if the galaxy can just casually compare notes so easily, and especially if backlogged wealths of knowledge such as Wikipedia (Spikipedia?) existed. One of Korkie’s classmates ain’t livetweeting Maul & Viszla’s duel for someone working in the jedi temple to stumble across; preteen Syril Karn ain’t reading his feed debate the moral logistics of calling the Chancellor an Emperor in the context of the Sith Wars. However, I absolutely could see those things coming into fruition after the Empire’s tyranny is ended, and if you compared the 30s ABY to the rise of echo-chamber fascism on the Internet in the 2020s, the First Order’s existence becomes a little more believable. Teenage Poe brags to Rebellion enthusiasts in GalacTube comment sections that he was born on Yavin IV and later he introduces Rey to Lothal’s feline meme culture. I think the Moomins of Bespin would spark joy in Finn.
When Bounty Hunters refer to “the Holonet” they’re likely talking about all the holonets. BHs roam so much that their own network of he-said-she-said is constantly plugged in to as many planetary underworlds as they could wish. When a civilian says something like “it’s all over the holonet” they’re either talking about something relative to their planet’s society, or something has spread through mainstream news until multiple planets are insularly talking about something big. When a Bounty Hunter says the same thing, they’re more so just saying “everyone’s talking about it”
Hologram communication is easier to transmit through lightyears than a whole Web is, especially when you consider how stuttery and staticky it canonically is—which is treated as normal. Trailing along the edges of the galaxy’s hyperspace shipping lanes are a huge network of satellites which communicate with each other, data jumping from one to the next until it reaches the destination it’s meant for. Cell towers in space. This network, made only for calls, was constructed by a great diplomatic effort of the Republic centuries before the Clone Wars. It was long suggested that this same system could be refitted with better technology and used to create a Galactic Holonet as well, but such concepts died in the carpets of politics many a-time before the Empire levied even harsher nos. This is the concept that the NR eventually revisits.
Even on the case of planetary holonets, only the peaceful & developed planets had ones similar to the internet we’re all on. The majority of the Outer Rim sans a few rich independent worlds, such as Mon Cala or Raxus, were more comparable to the online connectivity of developing countries on Earth. Wealthy or urban citizens may have access—if their government or corporations have even built a holonet for themselves at all—but a great many do not. Luke probably wasn’t on Tatooineblr*, but Leia might have occasionally browsed Alderreddit. Coruscant has a massive holonet but it is mostly inhabited by surface-citizens or upper-layer working class people. Those who reside deeper in the depths have more in common with the Outer Rim than with the Core.
(*Tatooine would be one of the planets without a holonet at all but I couldn’t turn down the joke)
In the case of the Jedi, information about them was abundant if you searched, but it all went greatly ignored by the general populace who didn’t have much reason to care—beside the occasional user of CorusTube who found them fascinating or whatever. Mostly you’d just find aesthetic photography of the temple, “that’s not how the force works” memes, (….oh there’s definitely discourse on “The Force”. So much discourse. The Empire really had to go over this shit with a molecule-toothed comb. There was probably a guy who’d rile up arguments just to whip out a video of a Jedi levitating a boulder as a douchey checkmate) or romanticizing the monk lifestyle. It wasn’t until the New Republic that their legacy was rebuilt, partially by the emergence of Spikipedia.
In the 10s ABY I could definitely see an explosion of new things posted to the burgeoning Galactic Holonet as Imperial censorship is done away with and old videos or diaries of the prequel era return to the public eye—now a larger, more public eye than ever before. Maybe a small portion of those aesthetic photos for #JediLife that Corusgram seemed obsessed with for a couple years in the 20s BBY are being reposted, reshared. Maybe people in the most random places in the galaxy can finally speak about their parents’ memories of compassionate Jedi or of how the Galaxy was before the Empire. In other places, though, Imperial warlords have discovered whole new ways of new recruitment in this era of rapid change.
Also, the mode of accessing the Holonet is pretty uniform across the galaxy and doesn’t change much with time. Phones aren’t really a thing; you either have datapads the size of tablets which perform the same functions as them, or more portable communicators (often cylindrical, but they vary) which can only make calls or show 2D images.
